Verizon has sold bits of its landline businesses in three states and is negotiating to do the same elsewhere.Nonetheless Verizon and AT&T, its main competitor, are still mostly "wireline", says Craig Moffett, an analyst with Bernstein Research.
It is also likely to lead to higher bills for captive customers such as businesses with switchboards, which cannot do away with their landlines so easily.Even if Verizon and AT&T can overcome their "wireline problem", says Mr Moffett, it will not go away.
But its wireline business remained under pressure: revenue fell by 3.6% in the period and operating profit slumped by 90%.For now, Verizon has halted new investment in fibre while it tries to drum up more customers for FiOS.
The wireline operation increased its broadband connections from just over 2m at the end of last year to almost 3m in Italy at the end of June.
"The ultimate goal is to have one IP infrastructure, and services running on that infrastructure," says Mr Alwan.This convergence affects not only wireline networks, but wireless ones too.
It cost about $23 billion to build and, according to Sanford Bernstein, an investment firm, contributed to the $32 billion debt of Verizon's wireline division.To counter FiOS, the cable companies have run fibre to the neighbourhood node, from where the connection continues to the home through their existing cable.
Mr Wheeler says he also wants to consider reclassifying broadband as a public utility under Title II (or other parts) of the 1996 Telecommunications Act not a great idea unless you want tomorrow's internet to be governed by rules written for wireline telephone services.
But most of them seem to use cellphones (firmly tethered to the desk), not landline phones.Jackson Thubela, a young phone-shop proprietor, explains that he recently shifted from wireline to wireless because his old phones kept breaking down mainly because thieves made off with the copper wire and the landline company, Telkom, would not send people to fix them.
On July 27th, in its interim results, the group reported profits of €7.1 billion on revenues of €15.2 billion (of which €8.7 billion was from wireline and €6.2 billion from TIM .But Mr Tronchetti Provera is pinning many of his hopes for growth on Brazil, forever a country of the future, where Telecom Italia has now invested $6 billion.
Ultimately, he hopes that Verizon's shareholders will see the logic of separating its wireline and wireless operations, which would make it easier for him to win control of Verizon Wireless.The unpleasant alternative would be to mount a hostile takeover of Verizon the sort of thing that Sir Chris might have relished, but out of keeping with Mr Sarin's more measured style.
But whichever partner BT eventually chooses, the marriage encapsulates a wider trend in the telecoms sector: the industry's bosses again believe that there are important synergies to be had by owning both wireless and wireline networks.Dominant wisdom about whether both belong together has changed over the years.
